


A Slip of the Time

by drekadair



Series: Tales from the Folly [7]
Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-01
Updated: 2018-12-01
Packaged: 2019-09-03 00:04:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16797436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drekadair/pseuds/drekadair
Summary: Peter finds himself in a situation that only Peter could find himself in. A situation involving time travel.





	A Slip of the Time

**Author's Note:**

> The short story "The Home Crowd Advantage" follows immediately after the end of _Midnight Riot_ , but there are a few inconsistencies. Like Peter having a taser, even though he's not qualified to use one yet, and Nightingale running off Aberdeen on his own even though he's just been shot. This is one possible, if unlikely, explanation.

The only good thing to be said about the thing with the cars was that it was easily explained on paper. Obviously me and Guleed couldn’t tell the truth about the BMWs being haunted, but we could attribute everything to a couple of psychotic breaks, one on the part of Kimberly, the other Masirovic. Kimberly and Masirovic get some unnecessary but harmless therapy, no charges are filed, and everything looks good for Belgravia’s clear-up rate. This last may explain why Guleed generously offered to finish up the paperwork for the Belgravia side of the case. I still had to write up my notes for the Folly’s records, of course, but it was a beautiful hot July afternoon and I figured that could wait for another time. Autumn, maybe.

Since the Asbo was in the shop for some routine maintenance—and if you think I was nervous about letting a mechanic near my car after the past week, you’d be right—I took the Tube to Russel Street Station and went in the front doors of the Folly, which I hardly ever do. As I stepped into the marble coolness of the lobby a wave of dizziness washed over me. I leaned against the glass doorman’s booth until it passed and promised myself I’d drink more water.

I cut through the Folly to the courtyard, which is faster than walking around the coach house from the street, and climbed up the spiral staircase to the tech cave. My plan was to finish up a couple of things on the computer and then call Beverly and see if she wanted to do something that didn’t involve fishing waterlogged cars out of the Thames. This plan went right out the window when I slapped my hand down on the master switch and found it wasn’t there. I don’t mean it was already turned on. That’s happened before, and while its annoying because it means, a, someone’s been in the tech cave using my expensive electronics, and b, my expensive electronics could be fried by magic, it’s not exactly surprising. No, this was different—the switch just wasn’t there at all. 

There were other not-so-subtle clues that something wasn’t quite right. Things moved on my desk, a different blanket thrown over the back of chaise longue, new DVDs and games stacked in front of the TV. Not new, I realized, looking closer. Just the opposite—all of my newest movies and games were missing, but a lot of the ones I’d been really into a year or so ago were out.

I sat down on the chaise longue and started a mental list of the possible scenarios that could explain this. Moving around blankets and movies wasn’t a big deal, but the master switch was worrying because it had taken my cousin Obi most of a day to get it wired in and even if someone took the requisite day to undo all his work there would still be marks on the walls—which there weren’t. So either someone was playing an elaborate practical joke on me, or… I couldn’t think of anything else. Since I couldn’t see Nightingale or Molly doing such a thing, that meant someone else had broken into the couch house.

Someone like Lesley?

That thought propelled me off the chaise longue and set me to carefully searching the room from top to bottom, looking for anything missing—or anything added. I found plenty of both, but nothing I could attribute to Lesley or any other intruder. Finally I booted up my second-best laptop to see if she’d hacked my account and discovered that all of my files from the last year had been deleted. I was about to use some very strong language when I glanced down at the bottom right-hand corner of the screen and saw the date.

25/7/2012

Now, there are ways to alter your system’s time and date, but they usually make your computer break down and cry when it tries to connect to a network and mine was connected just fine. “Elaborate prank” wasn’t off the table yet, but it was looking more and more like something a lot worse was going on, worse even than Lesley breaking into the Folly and accessing secure files. I could have tried visiting a couple of news sites but as long as I was being incredibly paranoid I had to consider that those could be faked, too. There was really only one way to completely sure.

I found Nightingale in the atrium, though it had been empty when I passed through half an hour ago. Despite being one of the warmest rooms in the Folly during winter, the atrium was somehow also one of the coolest rooms during the summer, which explained why he had chosen it for his afternoon tea. I could see steam rising from a fresh pot at his elbow. He looked up when I came in and frowned slightly.

“Peter,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting you back so soon.”

It was such a comfortable, familiar scene—Nightingale having tea in the atrium, asking me about a case—that I almost told him about Guleed and the paperwork out of reflex. But I caught myself in the nick of time because I’d just noticed Nightingale wasn’t sitting in one of the leather armchairs. He was sitting in a wheelchair and that meant this really was July 2012, not July 2013, and he had just been released from the hospital after being shot by one of Punch’s puppets in May. 

Practical joke was out the window, but I added hallucination or bad dream to the bottom of the list, because the only other alternative was time travel and I wanted very badly for that not to be what was happening. But just in case I had traveled back in time one year I couldn’t risk Nightingale or anyone else finding out in case that somehow radically altered the timeline.

“Peter?” Nightingale said.

I tried to remember what I had been doing on July 25th of last year and drew a complete blank. “I—forgot something,” I tried. “I’m just going to run up and get it and I’ll be out again.” I gestured vaguely toward the east staircase, hoping he would think I was heading for my room. Actually, I needed to check the library for anything on time travel, though I had a bad feeling anything helpful would be in the magical library and in Latin and therefore useless to me.

“I see,” Nightingale said. He picked up his teacup and watched me through the rising steam. He looked alarmingly thin and frail, though his gray eyes were clear and sharp. “When you’re done, meet me in the teaching lab. I’d like to show you something.”

I couldn’t tell if he suspected something was wrong or not. I’d forgotten how close Nightingale and I had grown over the year and a half we’d worked together. It had been a long time since I’d seen him so closed and unreadable around me.

“What about your tea?” I asked.

He smiled slightly. “It will only take a moment,” he said.

Since there didn’t seem to be any way to weasel out of it, I went upstairs and dawdled in my room for a couple of minutes and then came back down again. I didn’t touch anything, because I was beginning to worry about how my time traveling would affect not just Nightingale, but myself as well. What if the 2012 me entered his room and found everything moved around? What if Nightingale asked him about the thing he’d showed him that afternoon in the lab and he had no idea what Nightingale was talking about?

Molly was loitering in the atrium near Nightingale’s abandoned tea and watched me in an extra-creepy way as I walked toward the back of the Folly. I found Nightingale in the teaching lab, sitting in his wheelchair with his silver-topped cane across his lap and a tennis ball in one hand. The lab looked pretty much the same as usual, though the bench was whole and unmarred by any werelight accidents.

“What did you want to show me—sir?” I asked, remembering to add the sir at the last minute. I’d gotten pretty casual about sirring Nightingale, but 2012 me would have been a lot more formal. I remembered that Dr. Walid had left strict instructions about Nightingale using magic after he got out of the hospital and I hoped Nightingale wouldn’t overextend himself.

“Actually, it’s what you can show me,” Nightingale said. He levitated the tennis ball with _impello_ , and then, without any warning, threw it at my face.

Now, despite a year and a half of magical training, when someone lobs something at my head my first instinct is still to duck. But having tennis balls thrown at me was precisely how I’d learned to grab things with _impello_ and I’d spent hours in the lab training just like this, so shaping the forma and catching the ball out of the air was practically instinctual. The problem, I realized as I looked past the hovering tennis ball to the cold expression on Nightingale’s face, was that in 2012 I’d barely mastered _impello_ and certainly wasn’t up to catching a ball with it. I’d screwed up and he knew it and he knew I knew he knew it.

“That was well done,” Nightingale said. “Now why don’t you tell me who you are and what you’ve done with my apprentice.”

I froze, which was stupid. If I’d just said “What?” and looked blank I might still have been able to bluff my way out of it, but my reaction just confirmed his suspicions.

“Please don’t insult me by pretending you don’t know what I’m talking about,” Nightingale continued. When I remained silent he hefted his cane slightly and said coolly, “My patience is not inexhaustible.” He was wearing a hard, dangerous expression I’d seen on his face only a few times before, and never directed at me. Being on the receiving end was not a comfortable feeling.

“How do you know?” I asked, curious despite myself. “I mean, the _impello_ was a dead giveaway, but that was just a test. How did you know I didn’t just forget something and come home early?”

“Because the real Peter left to visit his family in Kentish Town an hour ago,” Nightingale said. “If he’d forgotten something, he’d have been back in less than thirty minutes.”

“I could have had a fight with my parents or something,” I said. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time.

“In which case he wouldn’t claim to have forgotten something,” Nightingale said. “Now, I believe you still haven’t answered my question.”

I felt him building a spell, quickly and efficiently, something big—sixth order at least. “Wait!” I said, alarmed. “Dr. Walid said you’re not supposed to do any magic yet—he’ll kill us both!” I thought about the weirdness of the whole situation and corrected myself. “He’ll kill all of three of us.”

The spell faltered and then dispersed. Nightingale frowned at me, looking more puzzled and annoyed than dangerous, which was a relief. “What’s that supposed mean?” he demanded.

Since secrecy was obviously no longer an option, the only way out of becoming another notch on Thomas “Tiger Tank” Nightingale’s belt seemed to be the truth. If only I could be confident he’d believe me. Keeping my movements nice and slow, I reached out and plucked the tennis ball out of the air.

“I am Peter Grant,” I said. “But there’s another Peter Grant at his parents’ flat right now. There seems to have been some kind of… accident.”

“An accident,” Nightingale repeated.

“I’m think I traveled back in time,” I said. “Which is crazy, because I’m pretty sure that’s not possible. I mean, I think there are some special cases involving quantum physics or wormholes or something, but they’re all hypothetical and require ridiculous stuff like infinitely long cylinders that I don’t think—”

Nightingale held up a hand to stop my flood of words.

“You claim you traveled backward through time,” he said. “From when?”

I told him and he studied my face like he was trying to read some kind of secret in my features. I tried not to fidget under the intensity of his gaze.

“Only a year,” he murmured, and then, louder, “Make a werelight, please. Slowly.”

I took my time lining up the forma and opened my hand to reveal a softly glowing yellow ball. Nightingale stared at it for a moment and then blinked, looking away.

“Well?” I asked.

“Your _signare_ is certainly familiar,” Nightingale said. “But it doesn’t match Peter’s—my Peter’s—this time’s Peter’s— _signare_. He’s too new to the art to have developed one.”

“When we met for the first time at Covent Garden last January,” I said, “the first thing you said to me was, ‘Hello, what are you up to?’ And two months ago, after you were shot, I visited you in the hospital and you told me you’d been shot before in the second World War and how to do haemomancy with Molly. I could tell you more things you’ve told me but not your Peter—this time’s Peter—but I’m getting a little worried about causality and I don’t think I should say anything about stuff that hasn’t happened yet.”

“Stop babbling, Peter,” Nightingale said, and I knew I’d convinced him.

After Nightingale was released from the hospital he was largely confined to the ground floor of the Folly for the first month. Once he was able to manage stairs on his own, I’d carry his wheelchair down to the basement so he could supervise my practice in the firing range, but he still slept in a bedroom on the ground floor and as far as I knew never went upstairs until he was able to do away with the wheelchair entirely. I didn’t mind carrying it, but I don’t think he liked asking for help. He made an exception this time, though, because he said he needed to consult some books in the magical library.

“We need to get this cleared up before my Peter—this time’s Peter—comes back,” he said.

I couldn’t agree more, so I hauled his wheelchair up the flight of stairs to the balcony overlooking the atrium and waited while he slowly followed after me. It was obviously painful going and I wanted to offer to help, but I didn’t think he’d appreciate it. When he reached the top he was breathing hard and favoring his right side. I was planning on hitting the mundane library while Nightingale worked, but once I wheeled him into the magical library and parked him at one of the big mahogany tables in the middle of the room I told him I would stay and help.

“How?” he said—snapped, really. I’d forgotten how tetchy being injured made him. “I doubt an addition year of tutoring has improved your Latin enough for you to actually be useful.”

“It’s improved enough for me to read the titles,” I said. “I can fetch and carry books for you.”

It was a sign of how exhausted he was that he agreed. I spent the next couple of hours pulling down books, stacking them at his elbow, and shelving them again when he was done with them. Twice I slipped out to the mundane library to grab a couple of books he recommended and bring them back, and I worked through that stack while he worked through his. Molly brought up tea, and then a fresh pot, and I was just wondering if she would bring up a third when Nightingale shut his current book with a quiet but very final _thump_ and said, “There’s nothing here.”

I looked up from a rather poor 1937 English translation of a 1926 German treatise that seemed to be an early attempt to synthesize magic with quantum mechanics, though the language barrier and my own poor grasp on physics left me struggling to understand it. It was a lot more technical than anything Nightingale had assigned me before, and considering his own apathy toward science I was surprised he even knew it was there, let alone had ever read it.

“I guess we could call up the scientists from CERN,” I said. “See if they have any suggestions for sending me back.”

“Since it would appear magic is what brought you here, I strongly doubt anything but magic will be able to send you back,” Nightingale said.

This was when having a magical Theory of Everything would really come in handy, I thought, since theoretically there shouldn’t be any difference between science and magic. I closed my own book, wondering what had happened to the author, if he’d joined the Nazis or if he’d fled the country like Stromberg or died in a concentration camp making demon traps for Nightingale and his mates to diffuse. Despite hanging around Nightingale, who was a living museum exhibit, it was hard to think of those people and their lives and anything other than history, dusty and long gone. But it made me sad to think of all the knowledge that had been lost. Maybe if things had ended differently at Etterburg there’d be wizards working at CERN right now for me to call and they could send my home in their TARDIS.

“Do we have a Plan B?” I asked.

“Well, we can tuck you somewhere out of the way for a year and simply wait for the problem to resolve itself,” he said.

“That’s a horrible idea,” I said. “Do you realize how many chances there would be for me to accidentally screw up the future? Or create some kind of horrible time paradox?”

Or not-so-accidentally screw up the future, because there were a lot of things I wished had happened differently—Simone dying, Lesley going to the Dark Side. I knew I couldn’t try to change things, but I had a bad feeling the longer I hung around in the past the greater the temptation would be to try anyway.

“Perhaps you’re right,” Nightingale said. “You do seem to possess a remarkable talent for destroying things. London might not survive two Peter Grants.”

Amazingly, I completely managed to avoid telling him about the destruction of Skygarden Tower. Or the Tube platform at Oxford Circus. Or the ambulance hijacking. Or the thing at Kew Gardens, even though it wasn’t my fault.

“Maybe we should try some practical experiments,” I suggested. “Repeat the series of events leading up to the transit, or perform them backwards.”

Nightingale gave me the long-suffering look he gives me whenever I talk about magical experiments but he admitted it was worth a try so we went back downstairs and I spent a while walking in and out of the front doors and the tradesman’s entrance while Nightingale watched from the atrium. My hypothesis was that the dizzy spell I’d felt when I walked through the Folly’s front door marked the actual time travel, and that the heavy vestigium imbuing the building from generations of wizards casting spells somehow enabled the transit. Or something. Unfortunately my results neither supported nor disproved my hypothesis, because absolutely nothing happened except that I walked through a lot of doors over and over again.

“Clearly this is not working,” Nightingale said, after I walked through the atrium for the fifth time.

“Alright,” I said. “Do we have a Plan C?”

Before Nightingale could answer we heard the door at the back open and someone whistling “Feelin’ Good” by Nina Simone. Me and Nightingale looked at one another in a moment of mutual panic and then Nightingale said, “Lay low for a while, I’ll come find you later.”

I was already halfway out of the atrium, on my way to the smoking room on the basis that no one ever used it so the other me was unlikely to go looking in there. I spent a solid hour sitting in one of the comfortable armchairs and wondering if I would have to leave the country for a year to avoid screwing up my own timeline. I didn’t dare turn on my cell phone because I was afraid it would interfere with the other me’s phone, so I had nothing better to do but try to remember all of the lessons about time travel I’d learned from Doctor Who and think about which country I’d hide out in. I’d just decided Australia was the obvious choice, but New Zealand could be nice—America was definitely out, too much chance of getting Kimberley Reynolds involved—when Nightingale opened the door and rolled inside.

“He’s in the coach house,” Nightingale said, before I could ask. “But it’s not long until supper, so we don’t have much time. I believe I may know where to find the solution to our problem, but it will require a trip to Aberdeen.”

“Aberdeen?” I repeated. “What’s in Aberdeen?”

“An old colleague with an excellent collection of rare books—including several the Folly does not have a copy of.”

That rang a bell. Last year—last year for me, anyway—Nightingale had dragged me up to Aberdeen for an extremely vague research trip. He told me he was consulting a book for a reason that was none of my business—he didn’t say it like that, but that’s what it amounted to—but he brought me along so I would have the chance to meet one of the “old crowd.” Before they popped their clogs, presumably, since Nightingale seemed to be the only one getting younger each year.

“When do we leave?” I asked, though I was sure I already knew the answer.

“We are not leaving,” Nightingale said. “Peter and I—my Peter—this time’s Peter—will leave in the morning. You will stay here and keep and eye on things in London while we’re gone.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to leave the other Peter here and take me instead? It won’t be easy to keep me—him—from figuring out what you’re looking for.”

“I’m sure he will produce a nearly constant stream of curious questions and remain utterly unsatisfied by my evasive answers,” Nightingale said dryly. “Nonetheless, I would prefer a more experienced practitioner to be available should something untoward occur here.” He narrowed his eyes. “But if this is your past, surely you remember all of this happening already?”

“Yeah,” I said, “but if I suggested you take your Peter—the other Peter—because I remember you taking me to Aberdeen for an unexplained errand, then where did the idea come from in the first place? It becomes a paradox.”

I’ve never seen Nightingale roll his eyes, but he gave me a wry look that was as close as he ever comes and said, “I asked Molly to serve you supper in the small dining room upstairs, and to make up a room for you on the second floor.”

“What does she think of all this?” I asked.

“Molly?” Nightingale shook his head. “It’s impossible to say.”

It turned out the rooms on the second floor were larger than the ones on the third floor and had an ensuite, plus a small sitting room and a small second bedroom I guessed was for a valet. I slept in my underwear, since the other me was wearing my pajamas and it was warm enough to do without a few extra layers, anyway. I woke to find Molly had washed my suit overnight so I got to put on clean clothes in the morning, which was nice, though I was disappointed that the second floor didn’t have showers, either.

I stepped cautiously out of my room and almost ran into Molly, who seemed amused by my stifled yelp of surprise. She inclined her head downstairs.

“Nightingale wants to see me?” I asked. “Is the other Peter out of the way?”

She gave me an annoyed look and slight nod which I took to mean yes and yes, so I slipped down the western staircase on the principle that I usually used the eastern one and found Nightingale justing finishing up his breakfast in the big dining room, which we’d only used while he was stuck on the ground floor because Molly had an alarming tendency to set all of the places. He looked up when I came in, and then hesitated.

“I’m the one from the future,” I said.

He smiled slightly. “My Peter—the other Peter—coincidentally chose to wear the same suit today,” he said. “He’s in the coach house at the moment but I imagine he’ll be back soon—we’ll be leaving shortly. I wanted to…” he hesitated.

“Tell me not to blow anything up while you’re gone?” I said.

“Something like that, yes.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “You’ll be gone, what, two days? How much could go wrong in two days?”

“I wish you wouldn’t say things like that,” Nightingale said.

Despite Nightingale’s fears the next two days were fairly uneventful except for the one incident I’ve already mentioned which, I should point out, was resolved without anything being blown up or set on fire. He and his Peter—the other Peter—came back on the 28th and spent the morning resolving the thing with Bobet, while I spent the morning staying out of sight. Eventually Nightingale found me hiding in the smoking room, getting caught up on my Latin—not easy when all of my notes were currently in the future.

“You’ve made it to Pliny, I see,” Nightingale said. “That’s better than I expected.”

I grinned and said, “I have a good teacher.”

“Less cheek, if you please,” Nightingale said. “I’ve sent my Peter—the other Peter—on a pointless errand that should keep him occupied while we send you back to when you belong.”

That got me up and out of my chair. “You found what you were looking for?”

“I hope so,” Nightingale said. “But only a practical test will tell.”

We set up in the teaching lab where Nightingale, working from a sheaf of hand-written notes, had me crawl around on the floor drawing complex diagrams of interlocking circles with a piece of chalk. I recognized the general design from the demon trap, Stromberg’s _stadtkrone_ , and the mysterious door in the basement, but I had no idea what the lines meant and Nightingale refused to tell me.

“This ritual is far beyond you,” he said, “and I’d prefer not to give you any ideas for further reckless experiments.”

After half an hour my knees were aching and my hands were covered in chalk dust, but the diagram was complete. Nightingale had me stand in the middle and, despite the lines in no way resembling a bullseye, I had the distinct sensation of standing in the center of a target.

“What is this ritual supposed to do, exactly?” I asked.

“It is meant to strip away or undo powerful spells and magical effects,” Nightingale said. “However you came here, it certainly occurred through magic, and it is my hope that this will reverse whatever that was.”

“Could this undo the damage to Lesley’s face?” I asked.

“Unfortunately not,” Nightingale said. “That damage is entirely physical, for all that it was caused by magic. This ritual could have removed Henry Pyke’s spirit, if we had had the opportunity to use it—though it would have been overkill. There is a much simpler spell used to exorcise spirits.”

“So what do we do now?”

“We do nothing,” Nightingale said. “You stand still and try not to smudge the lines while I perform the ritual.”

“What happens if I smudge the lines?” I asked.

“Focus, Peter,” Nightingale said. “And try to contain any questions you might have for the next few minutes.”

He rearranged the pages on his lap and began reading aloud in Latin. I tried to follow what he was saying but the language alternated between very technical and very formal and anyway I was quickly distracted by the formae. There were a lot of them, none of which I recognized and all of them connected differently than any spell I had ever seen before. I could feel it building around me, like the pressure before a thunderstorm, and I started getting a little nervous. I wasn’t sure Nightingale should be doing anything this big so soon after getting shot and I wasn’t sure what would happen to me if it went wrong, but there wasn’t anything I could do about by this point except stand still in my not-bullseye and try not to smudge the lines.

Nightingale stopped speaking and there was a moment of silence, but I could still feel the spell pressing around me like a giant static cloud about to go zap. I was about to risk saying something when he released the spell, exactly the same way he released a fireball to make it explode. A wave of dizziness crashed over me, my vision went dark around the edges, and I smelled woodsmoke and pine needles. 

I thought, _This is promising._

I blinked my vision clear and Nightingale was gone. So were the chalk lines on the floor, but the burnt hole through the top of the lab bench was back, which I took as a good sign. I hurried out to the atrium and found Nightingale coming down the stairs.

“Peter!” he said. “You made it back.”

“Yeah, I did,” I said. A terrible thought occurred to me. “Wait, what’s the date?”

“The twenty-eighth of July,” Nightingale said. He smiled at my horrified look and added, “Twenty-thirteen.”

“Thank God,” I said. “Then it’s been three days here, too?”

“Yes,” Nightingale said. “You just… vanished.”

To say Nightingale is not a demonstrative person would be an understatement, but I could hear the strain in his voice. “You must have known I’d make it back,” I said. “This already happened a year ago for you.” Which made my head hurt just to think about.

“I cast a powerful ritual on you a year ago,” Nightingale corrected. “Subsequent to which you disappeared. I assumed you would reappear at the same moment you left 2013. When you didn’t, I admit I became concerned the spell had not worked as planned.” He gave me a cautious look. “I apologize for not warning you this was coming, but you insisted the creation of a paradox was a very real danger.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t think you were listening,” I said. I realized he was expecting me to be angry with him for not risking a tear in the space-time continuum and struggled not to smile. It must have been hard to tick off days on the calendar to a potentially disastrous event he knew was coming but couldn’t do anything about. And it was crazy to think that Nightingale had last seen me three days but also one year ago, and I’d last seen him five minutes but also three days ago.

“I don’t suppose in the intervening year you managed to find out what went wrong in the first place?” I asked. “Just so I can avoid repeating it, you understand.”

“Peter,” Nightingale said, “as far as I have been able to determine, nothing like this has even happened before.”

“What, _nothing?_ ”

“Nothing,” he said. “Only you, Peter, could find yourself in this situation.”

Which was completely unfair because I hadn’t even done anything except walk into the Folly, something hundreds of wizards through the years have done without ever once being transported back in time. I said as much, but Nightingale wasn’t impressed. He suggested I write up my report while my memories were fresh, so I sloped off to the tech cave to do that, but even though Nightingale assured me the chances of me time traveling again were slim, I made a point of avoiding the front doors for a while.


End file.
